Impostor Syndrome

by Kathy Wang, Lauren Fortgang (Narrator)

In 2006 Julia Lerner is living in Moscow, a recent university graduate in computer science, when she’s recruited by Russia’s largest intelligence agency. By 2018 she’s in Silicon Valley as COO of Tangerine, one of America’s most famous technology companies. In between her executive management (make offers to promising startups, crush them and copy their features if they refuse); self promotion (check out her latest op-ed in the WSJ, on Work/Life Balance 2.0); and work in gender equality (transfer the most annoying females from her team), she funnels intelligence back to the motherland. But now Russia's asking for more, and Julia’s getting nervous.

Alice Lu is a first generation Chinese American whose parents are delighted she’s working at Tangerine (such a successful company!). Too bad she’s slogging away in the lower echelons, recently dumped, and now sharing her expensive two-bedroom apartment with her cousin Cheri, a perennial “founder’s girlfriend”. One afternoon, while performing a server check, Alice discovers some unusual activity, and now she’s burdened with two powerful but distressing suspicions: Tangerine’s privacy settings aren’t as rigorous as the company claims they are, and the person abusing this loophole might be Julia Lerner herself.

The closer Alice gets to Julia, the more Julia questions her own loyalties. Russia may have placed her in the Valley, but she's the one who built her career; isn’t she entitled to protect the lifestyle she’s earned? Part page-turning cat-and-mouse chase, part sharp and hilarious satire, Impostor Syndrome is a shrewdly-observed examination of women in tech, Silicon Valley hubris, and the rarely fulfilled but ever-attractive promise of the American Dream.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Mystery Thriller, Contemporary, Audiobook, Adult

11 pages, Audiobook

First published May 25, 2021

Reviews

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Julia Lerner is a Russian Spy who works at Tangerine as the COO. However, Alice Lu, a low-level employee at Tangerine detects some strange activity at Tangerine. Will she bring down Julia, the female unicorn at Tangerine?

Maybe I am missing something because I really don't understand the rave reviews on this. If you LOVED this book, read 2040 by Lela Oswald because that book was also about tech and dangerous situations (but more exciting and based on real-life characters). The story telling was really off in this book - we know that a showdown is coming, but it took ages and ages to get there. Additionally, there were so many characters that it was really hard to feel emotionally invested when we are introduced to so many. When I started to feel for a character, we were transitioning to another POV with another character. By the time, we transitioned back, there were so many different characters and POV's introduced that I had nearly forgotten about the first character. The suspense also was lacking.

Overall, this book was OK but not deserving of a re-read, and there are far more entertaining books out there.

2024 Reading Schedule
Jan Middlemarch
Feb The Grapes of Wrath
Mar Oliver Twist
Apr Madame Bovary
May A Clockwork Orange
Jun Possession
Jul The Folk of the Faraway Tree Collection
Aug Crime and Punishment
Sep Heart of Darkness
Oct Moby-Dick
Nov Far From the Madding Crowd
Dec A Tale of Two Cities

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[Cindy Pham · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book stood in-between a lot of different things (satire, thriller, mystery, literary, etc) without fully committing to anything. I like the setup of following two protagonists who experience misogyny in the tech industry for different reasons, along with the synopsis’s promise of it being a cat-and-mouse chase. However, I don’t think their individual characters were deep enough to be engaging throughout the book, and maybe what would have remedied my interest is if the book truly lived up to the “cat-and-mouse chase” it said in the synopsis. It would have been cool to see an actual spy thriller that fully explores both protagonists’ stories, shows more interactions between the two of them, while also drawing parallels to both of their own personal hurdles during their chase.

[Emily May]

Ahhh! It has a cover!

I was fortunate enough to beta-read an early manuscript for this and I'm so excited to read the finished book! It's a page-turning corporate thriller with some very complex and fascinating protagonists. Read this if you don't mind reading about unlikable people 😉

[Brandice · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Imposter Syndrome a Russian orphan is recruited out of college to become a spy for a government intelligence agency, working to rise in the ranks and infiltrate a thriving tech company in Silicon Valley — Intrigued? I was too! ⁣
⁣
Julia Lerner is the COO of Tangerine, a massive social media company, and has obliged the agency by quietly providing requested information from Tangerine over the years, but now, their asks are getting larger, putting her at risk of being “found out”. She has to consider Charlie, her husband, and Emily, her newborn daughter, and enjoys the life she’s built in California. Other primary characters include Leo, Julia’s handler, and Alice, an IT support employee at Tangerine who suspects unusual activity on the servers.

I saw mixed reviews prior to starting the book but I really liked it — I was curious when I read the premise and despite it being easy to perceive Julia as “the bad guy” I couldn’t help but root for her. The spy storyline was interesting but I found the storyline about Julia’s executive role at a tech company to be the most interesting aspect. Lots of relatable issues for many women, especially those who work in the corporate or tech space. Imposter Syndrome was a character-driven, thought provoking read.

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad… but not good either. I think I would’ve enjoyed this more if my expectations for what was in the book had been different. A Russian spy undercover as COO of one of America’s largest tech companies? Sounds like something I’d adore, but for whatever reason I got from the summary that there was going to be some kind of crush/relationship with the savvy, but lowly, engineer. A girl who catches a bug in the system and as they “get closer” our spy begins to question if what she’s doing is right and if she really supports Russia anymore. It’s not any sort of lgbtq+ plot, and maybe that’s on me, but I feel like the summary had hinted at it. Besides that, the plot was slow moving & the ending seemed unlikely, but it was still an averagely good book.

[Tatiana]

Russian spy mystery written by an author who knows nothing about Russia. Why do they even bother? A serious question.

P.S. I think you meant Yulia.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

While there is spy stuff here, it's less a thriller and more a dive into character and setting. All the extra trappings of the spy story are a great way to draw you in to a story that's really about Silicon Valley corporate culture and how it plays out specifically for women.

Julia is the center of the novel, she survived a harrowing childhood to get recruited by a Russian intelligence agency and installed as the head of a tech startup. But it's been a long time since then and now Julia has gotten comfortable as the COO of Tangerine, a massive tech conglomerate a la Facebook or Google. Her role as a spy has been simple, paying attention and passing along information she hears, but now her handler Leo is making bigger requests. It's time to pay her country back for what they've given her, but it will also require putting herself at risk in a way she never has before.

On the other side of the tech success spectrum, we have Alice. Brought up by her ambitious immigrant parents, she worked hard to set herself up for a future in Silicon Valley. Despite being smart and capable, she has fallen down the ladder rather than climbed it, relegated to a job in Tangerine's IT department, and she's barely holding on to it. But Alice's tedious work also means she's the only one who notices unusual server activity and traces it back to Julia.

While we move the plot forward to see what Julia and Alice will do, this is more about the journey than the destination. Getting to see how the women present themselves inside and outside of the company, how Julia's role as an executive is vastly different than the men around her, how Alice's female boss sets her up for failure rather than success, all of that is the real good stuff.

I liked FAMILY TRUST a lot and this is more ambitious in taking on some big themes. There aren't enough work novels so I loved getting that, and this manages to have a lot to say about high-placed women and the deal with the devil they end up making to stay there. Wang writes readable and interesting books and I am excited to see what's next.

[Elizabeth San Soucie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the worst book I have ever read. I wish I could get my time and money back.

ITS ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE. When the plot slows down, the author just introduces new characters, that do NOTHING for the storyline.

Is it mystery? No.
Thriller? No.
Suspense? No.

ABSOLUTELY BORING? YES

[Marchpane · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is the impostor. It masquerades as a novel with an interesting premise, but turns out to have zero of substance to say. Too boring to be actively bad, just terribly bland.

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imposter Syndrome is a slow-burn espionage thriller about women in Silicon Valley. The story and characters really grew on me and the ending was exactly what I wanted. Julia Lerner was abandoned as a child in Russia, studied computer science, was recruited as a Russian spy, and then climbed to the top of her game as a foreign asset and the head of a tech company in Silicon Valley. Alice Lu is a Chinese immigrant working in Julia's company when she notices some strange patterns in data transfer and decides to investigate....

This book balances espionage and competing loyalties with issues of marriage, motherhood, and sexism in the tech industry. I wasn't sure how I felt about it at first, especially because some of the men at the margins of the story are truly reprehensible, but I became quite invested in the twists and choices of these two women. It's a nuanced story with excellent characterization, a quiet sort of thriller. Something I would love to see more of.

[Heather Salonga · Rating 5 out of 5]

The San Francisco Bay Area is filled with people who have not or do not fit in. Because they are too smart, or socially awkward, or part of a gender or racial minority group, or an immigrant. Many of them, even if successful, still carry this feeling but need to pretend they don’t.

Most of them are there to pursue their version of the American Dream, through silicon or software, media or some new consumer good or service. The culture that arises from the mix of these people, is shaped by their companies, the media that cover them can be very odd and amusing even to the people who have lived there for years.

In her second novel, Kathy Wang writes about two women in the same large tech company (Tangerine) who would normally rarely interact - Julia the Russian COO/spy, and Alice the American born Chinese technical support engineer.

Julia, the COO, was raised in a Russian orphanage where her ambition attracted the attention of her eventual spy handler who helped her to found a tech company using stolen face recognition technology. Her startup was later purchased by Tangerine, where she became its COO. As a spy, she would pass along interesting, incriminating information about other CEOs, politicians and former Russian oligarchs who pissed off the wrong person in power.

Alice, a support engineer at a secure messaging company that Tangerine also acquired, notices some strange server activity and slowly comes to realize that Julia, the COO, is behind it. It turns out that Julia has access to an account with an almost unlimited “God mode” which she uses for the Russian spy agency and her own personal and professional interests. Alice follows the hints that Julia has left behind and risks her job to catch Julia when others either don’t see it or don’t care. Alice’s insistence on pursuing this is driven by her desire for justice after suffering all the micro- and macro-aggressions she’s experienced as an Asian female and the attack on her mother that happened when she was a child.

When Alice was eight, she was in the dry cleaners where her mother was working when two privileged boys from the local highschool got drunk and decided to rob the store. When they found out that there was only forty dollars in the register, they hit her mother with a backpack full of previously stolen vodka and after her mother hit her head on the counter, the boys ran away leaving her bleeding on the floor. They were caught by the police but only had to apologize with their parents’ lawyer and do twenty hours of community service. As Alice grows older, she is upset that her mother didn’t demand more punishment for the two boys. Her mother didn’t want to make waves, she told her daughter that the wealthy have their own problems and they would get their lessons later.

We also find out more about Julia’s time growing up in an orphanage in Russia after being abandoned at seven by her newly widowed mother. Julia realizes that the only way to get out is to pretend to be exceptionally bright. She isn’t as bright as she pretends - but she is exceptionally driven and hardworking and these are the things that drives her to the top of Tangerine. Because she is a spy, Julia can’t make any friends and is constantly judged as a powerful woman in a leadership position and has to defend herself from the media, her subordinates in Tangerine as well as from other Russian spies.

Kathy Wang’s ethnographic detachment as she describes her character’s various habits reminds me of Kazuo Ishuguro’s when he describes the childrens art and interests in Never Let Me Go. Her style is the most funny when she writes about her characters’ purchases and hobbies -- a lot of times they are a way for these people to fit in with a group of like minded consumers. Her observations dance back and forth across the line between truth and absurdity. Julia’s often funny but uncharitable thoughts about everyone seem excessively paranoid, but as she uses her God like access to read their emails and instant messages, she inevitably finds out her suspicions are true.

In my first reading, I found that I was rushing to find out what happened. In my second, I was able to slow down and savor the author’s observations about her characters and the silliness and awfulness of life in the Bay Area. As an Asian woman, I also reflected on the way that Alice and her mother responded to the racism in their lives. With the violence against Asians reported in the news right now, I feel like it is time to be less quiet to do more and to say more. In both of Kathy’s books, she writes about the limits of many Asian parents' formulae of just working hard in achieving the American dream.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though some might say her being here was a cheat, Julia thought it was really everyone else who were the cheaters. The born rich, the parentally educated and loved-who went from private high schools to Ivy legacies to jobs with friends of the family. Who said they "hated the word 'privilege'" and insisted that they were who paid their mortgage each month. Yeah, but who put forth the down payment, Julia wanted to ask, how much did they give?

My reading muscle is flabby and weak and it hasn't helped I've read a few sort of "meh" books in a row but this gem may have broken my slump.

Although I don't typically gravitate toward espionage stories, I was immediately sucked into this tale about Silicon Valley immorality and voluntary ceding of privacy to big tech. The two main characters are Julia and Alice. Julia is second in command at Tangerine (clearly meant to be Facebook) and as such is one of the most powerful women in the world. She's also a Russian plant who's been asked to start doing more to earn her keep and she's chafing at the leash. But she also loves the money and the prestige of her job and American life (along with a husband and infant daughter) and knows what happens to those who defy Mother Russia, so she reluctantly agrees.

Alice Lu, on the other hand, is a low level help desk employee at Tangerine. Depressed, newly single, and hated by her boss, she works late one night and inadvertently stumbles upon unusual server activity that eventually leads to Julia herself. But Alice has no idea what to do with this information.

And if you hate technobabble, rejoice! For a story centered around software, there is a minimum of technical exposition.

This isn't a pulse-pounding spy thriller, more of a twisty tale that contemplates motherhood, privilege, immigration, and women fighting for their place. It sounds like the book tackles too much, and yet it's just right because Kathy Wang can write with such economy and punch:

She felt her heartbeat slow. A cool tranquility moved over her; she was in control again. She hadn't known any better before-had let them take it from her, use her life as a tool. But things were different now. As with any conflict, there would be difficulties, and she would likely struggle, but what was a life anyway, no matter how perfect, if a man could just come and steal it away?

I had no idea where this was going until the final page and let's just say I was surprised by the ending. I wanted to find some details unbelievable (like keeping employee passwords in a text file-really ? Is their root password "system"?), but how many data breaches has Facebook had? The most recent one was just in April. It also made me appreciate at least a little the mandatory security and privacy training that is drilled into us at work every year.

(Also, seriously, FUCK FACEBOOK.)

Thank you, Kathy Wang, for punching my reading slump in the face.

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great premise and some of the early bits about Silicon Valley, females in tech, the satire about SF and working mothers was really interesting and at times, laugh aloud funny. However, there was 0 character development so you don’t root for anyone and I found it really hard to connect with the storylines.

I also felt there were so many random side stories and overly detailed pieces about Russian intelligence that it lost me a bit after page 100 or so. I wound up skimming a lot of the middle just because I lost interest. Really promising plot but this one unfortunately wasn’t for me. A rare miss from BOTM!

[Holly R W · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Imposter Syndrome" is a plot-driven, spy story featuring three main characters: Julia, Leo and Alice. We first meet Julia as a young girl whose mother abandoned her and sent her to live in an orphanage. She is Russian. While at the orphanage, Julia meets Leo, who works for the KGB. He recruits her to be a spy for them and as a young woman, Julia is sent by the KGB to Silicon Valley. Through her own hard work and ambition, Julia becomes the CEO of a wildly successful company that sounds a lot like Facebook. Alice Lu is a low-level tech support worker at the company. She is a Chinese American. As the action unfolds, loyalties change as do alliances.

The book was interesting. I especially liked the relationship between Julia and Leo, changing as it did throughout the years. I also enjoyed how Alice Lu was portrayed.

Implausible? Yes.
The sort of tension usually found in spy thrillers? No.
Entertaining? Yes.



Here is a podcast with the author. https://www.librarylovefest.com/2021/...

[Dianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was my book missing pages?

This is a book that I have no clue how to review.


Is it a thriller? Is it a mystery? Is it satire? Is it another #metoo book?

I'm not even sure of the ending. Did Julia actually commit treason against America? If she switched sides-how is she and her family still alive. Did I miss a whole plotline--chapter---what did I miss?

I guess I'm going to have to re-read this before I give a 'real' review. *sigh*

I've decided that I'm not going to re-read this book right now...so this is it for the review. It was a confusing book for me that left more things unanswered than answered.

*ARC supplied by the publisher.

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book -- the plot of the book, the multiple POVs, and the pacing. It's difficult to characterize where this book "fits" -- it's not a thriller, but it involves spies; it comments on current society in Silicon Valley but isn't too trendy. I always like when something isn't the same song-and-dance of current literature, and I think this book qualifies. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the way Wang weaved the immigrant experience and the ways of America into the book. The only thing I didn't love was it felt like she jumped onto the trope train -- I especially saw this in Julia's sections when she tears other women down and talks about her views of the C-suite. That felt like an easy way out. Overall, though, I was engaged throughout the entire book and didn't feel like it was obvious how the book would end, two things I always appreciate.

[Amy J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful women in tech, Russian spies -- what's not to love! Quite a bit, actually.

3.5 Stars rounded to 4.

Julia was recruited to the top Russian spy agency in 2006. Twelve years later she is in the C-suite of the largest technology firm in the Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, Alice, an entry-level employee, is monitoring the company's computer activity and finds very suspicious patterns and can trace them straight to the top.

If you are expecting a spy/techno-thriller, this is not the book for you. This is a character-driven examination of the possibility of a spy being implanted into a US tech firm. The ending was OK, but not the tension-filled conclusion you expect from this type of novel. I was excited about the possibilities of this novel, but in the end it just fell flat.

One of the issues seems to be the novel was marketed as a thriller. If you are expecting an action-packed, on the edge of your seat type of story, this isn't it. Looking back after time, I think this is probably a bigger problem with the book, more than the story itself. If you can go into this expecting a bit more of character-driven points rather than a fast-moving plot, may change your view.

[Olivia Caridi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here’s what I’ll say...I don’t really know what genre this book falls into (corporate culture, spy, general character development, who knows), but regardless, I was hooked from the first sentence and practically read the whole thing in a day. Really liked the characters and the pacing regardless of what the heck genre this book is supposed to fit into.

[BookBagDC · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really interesting read, a mix of a thriller, an examination of the role of tech companies, and an exploration of the pressures faced by female executives in today's society.  The book focuses on Julia, a foreign intelligence asset who is sent to Silicon Valley to burrow into an American tech company.  Just a little over ten years later, she is the number two at one of the world's top technology firms, Tangerine, running the company and feeding key intelligence back to her home country.  When her work is inadvertently uncovered by Alice, a low level Tangerine staffer, it triggers a series of events that threatens to upend not just Julia and Alice's lives, but bring down one of the world's most powerful technology companies and fundamentally alter relationships between several world powers.  

This book is a great read.  All of its elements -- the thriller, the character studies, and exploration of some of the most pressing social issues today -- work well individually and come together to form a timely and highly engaging story.  This ambitious work is sure to be one of the top books of 2021.

Strongly recommended!

[Howard · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Stars for Impostor Syndrome (audiobook) by Kathy Wang read by Lauren Forthang.

This was kind of disappointing. I thought the book was going to be about imposter syndrome. I guess I should have read the synopsis instead of the title. For me the story ended up being a little over complicated and anticlimactic.

[Victoria Michel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book kept me hooked from the first page until the very last sentence. The dynamic between the Tech World, mega-successful business people, Russian espionage, and the simple struggles of everyday life, were truly engaging and so fun to read!

The chapters rotate between different characters’ perspectives, which allows the reader to empathize with each character. I thought this gave the story a unique and entertaining lens. I found myself cheering for each of the main characters, although there were many moments where I found myself disliking each of them, especially Julia. However, it’s clear that this was one of the goals the author was trying to achieve, and it worked!

To me, there was a conspicuous parallel between Julia Lerner and Sheryl Sandberg, who is the COO of Facebook (I wondered what she would think about this book...). I loved how this book addressed sexism and portrayed the shame and hostility that women are more prone to face in the workforce. However, Julia’s private thoughts made her look like she couldn’t care less about female empowerment, which I thought was a shame. But Jula is hyper-competitive and extremely selfish, which made me wonder if that’s the kind of ego, grit, and ambition that is needed to make it to the top as the first female executive (again, curious what Sheryl Sandberg would think ;) ).

I also thought it was fascinating to read how Russian intelligence was able to discreetly weave themselves into America’s society. This is obviously fiction, but it made me reflect on the recent controversies around the U.S. elections and how we truly don’t know how our data is being used on the internet.

All in all, I loved this book! Highly recommend this book if you’re in the mood for fun and daring spy fiction that involves complicated and powerful characters!

[Darcy Maher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not quite sure how to feel about this book. This was my pick for May’s BOTM and it felt a little outside of what I’d usually read, but the plot line of spies and women’s empowerment left me excited to try it. I feel like this book could have done a lot more with the plot line, and I never felt fully invested in any of the characters, even though the book did go into detailed backstories on them. The story overall felt a little all over the place, but it was a quick read and kept my attention for the most part.

[Karl Jorgenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clever, modern take on the spy thriller. Here, Julia is a deep-cover agent working for the Russian security service. And she's a big-shot in a billion-dollar social-media company. This provides a treasure trove for the Russians. But Alice, a low-level tech, sees something odd going on with the servers and tracks it to Julia.
The book is rich with the stilted process of success and failure in the tech world, infused with sexism even as the companies proclaim their commitment to equity.
The book is not marketed as a spy thriller, probably because 'spy thriller' evokes Robert Ludlum and Daniel Silva, where the spies shoot at each other from speeding cars. Those stories are fun, but not realistic. This book has the realistic feel of a John Le Carre novel, albeit with the fun, sass, and irony of the California tech industry.

[Anna (bibliophiles_bookstagram) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a struggle for me. I felt little, if any, connection with the characters, and I feel like the plot was far too muddled to even follow at times. I understand slow-burn, but this one read as kind of a structured mess to me. As much as the premise intrigued me, the story didn’t live up at all.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this one in two days, and it definitely got me out of my post-vacation reading slump. The Impostor Syndrome gives an in-depth and captivating look at the CA tech industry and the Russian spy network. Julia grew up in an orphanage in Russia, but now she is COO of Tangerine, the fictional Facebook-like social media giant. She is living the American dream: her Instagram-perfect life is marred only by her husband's infidelity and the spying she is still obligated to do for her Russian handlers. Alice, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, works at Tangerine in the tech department, and she inadvertently stumbles upon Julia's spying while doing a routine scan of the network. The rest of the book is full of tension, and I couldn't stop reading until I learned Alice and Julia's fates. I definitely plan to re-read this one in order to savor the writing, which is so darn good. Kathy Wang has a way of writing biting satire that goes down easily, but it's the expert character development that makes this one a must-read! Many thanks to Netgalley and William Morrow/Custom House for the library preview.

[Corrie Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I had read and enjoyed Kathy Wang's first book "Family Trust" last year and was super excited when BOTM picked "Impostor Syndrome" for May! "Impostor Syndrome" tells the story of two women in Silicon Valley, Alice - a Chinese-American low level employee at Tangerine (aka made-up Facebook) and Julia, the COO of Tangerine and also Russian spy. After Alice notices some abnormal server activity and links it to Julia, we get to see the complex relationship between the two take form and it was difficult to put down the book until I was able to find out who would ultimately win.

The character development of Julia and Alice was extremely well done, neither of them was particularly likeable, but you were able to see how their childhood and male-dominated workplace had shaped them into who they were. Loved the backdrop of Silicon Valley for this to bring up all of the side issues there about user privacy and the power of big tech in the US.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book once I got into it. Not sure why it didn't grab me right away as it took a few chapters before I was hooked. The pace is quick, the plot easy to follow and characters are enjoyable and likeable (not all but some). There are several twists and turns that I didn't see coming. It's hard to put a genre on this. While it is about espionage, it is also a look at powerful people and their lifestyles in Silicon Valley and the challenges women go through to succeed. The voices of Julia and Alice are quite different. You could hear their uniqueness.

[Kamila · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read this book if you want to waste precious hours on an extremely bland spy novel, that incorporates some intense workplace self mysogyny.

The plot holes are plentiful. Even for an "easy read". There are chapters upon chapters about charachters with little depth, who sometimes simply dissapear from the plot.

What this book does really well however, is trying to come off as feminist while at the same time spending pages on propagating negative stereotypes on women in leadership and tech positions. Women here are catty, they especially are on the look out to take each other down. From ratings to leadership, they don't miss chances. They are either technical and entirely anti-social, or non-technical and get places due to "outside" help. The men are even simpler, lacking any kind of charachter depth.

I wish I could have my time back.

[StorytimeWithShelbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again and again I am reminded not to judge a novel by its cover. Something about this cover combined with the summary had me convinced that this would be a dry read. I loved this and devoured every page.

[Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Family Trust so I was excited to read this. I love a character-driven book where the individual's motives are complex and "right" and "wrong" get blurred as you follow their journey. Kathy Wang has a way of blending tenderness, intrigue and satire (I laughed out loud many times reading this, while also feeling very invested in the characters) that I really admire. This isn't an easy to categorize book, and I like that about it. Will definitely be looking for her next one!